


shaking fingers don't always point in the right direction

by MasterOfAllImagination



Series: you and him and a gun [2]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person, evil!Harry, not a nice fic i'm warning you guys, shit i write at 3am after being emotionally traumatized by a single man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 14:44:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3573542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MasterOfAllImagination/pseuds/MasterOfAllImagination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Harry,” you say, and the word quivers, like the boy you thought you’d stopped being the minute you first put on that bespoke suit in the back of that plane and saved the world.  It drips uncertainty, and uncertainty, you know, is <i>weakness.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	shaking fingers don't always point in the right direction

You think you might be in love with him, and you think you might also be a little bit in hate with him, too; because he isn’t acting like the Harry you think you love.

He’s acting like someone else entirely.  You don’t know how or why-- you can’t pinpoint the exact nuances that differentiate This Harry from That Harry, but you know they’re _there_.  And so you ask yourself if you still love him.  Do you love only That Harry?  Is there enough of him leftover in This Harry for you to love him, too?  Or does it even matter?

Because he’s looking at you now with those eyes.  Those brown, changeable eyes that can go from soft and yielding to hard and cold in an instant. 

“Have I ever let you down?” he’s asking you.

And _of course_ the answer is “No, Harry,” but the words won’t go past your lips, because you’re beginning to wonder if he is _going_ to.  If this decision is going to be the one that makes your house of cards come tumbling down.  If this is, finally, the line that those eyes and that voice and that man cannot make you cross. 

Your voice, when you say his name, betrays you. 

“Harry,” you say, and it quivers, like the boy you thought you’d stopped being the minute you first put on that bespoke suit in the back of that plane and saved the world.  It drips uncertainty and uncertainty, you know, is _weakness_.  Action is the byword of a Kingsman.

Action.

 _And loyalty_ , you remind yourself, _ever loyalty_.  It forms a hierarchy in your mind: at the bottom is yourself, the gun-wielder, the bullet.  The thing that acts out the action.  Above you is Roxy-- sometimes next to you; sometimes your left-hand woman; but most times above you-- and above _her_ is Merlin.  The voice in your ear that sometimes steers you down the wrong corridor or doesn’t see a battalion of armed mercenaries lurking around the next corner

(you're never gonna let him live that one down)

but who always brings you home safe and sound in the end.

Above Merlin is Arthur.  The new one, that is.  The old one hadn’t even merited a ranking on the hierarchy at all.  You owe Arthur your gun and your suit and your missions and your pride and your posh flat and your family’s well-being. 

But then, sitting even higher than Arthur, so high that sometimes you fancy clouds ringing his head, sits Harry. 

You didn’t lay your life down on iron train tracks all those months ago to protect an organization.  You had one name barreling through your head as that subway bore down upon you, and instead of yelling that name you yelled

_fuck_

_yeah_

Because you knew what they wanted and you knew what _he_ would have wanted and that was enough. 

Has always been enough-- until, possibly, now.

“Have I ever let you down?” he asks again.

Your eyes slide into his. 

They are calm now.  They are open and bright and genuine and also soft.  It is very, very easy to lose yourself in them.  You want to. 

You shift your grip on the gun in your hand and slide your eyes back to the blindfolded man in front of you, bound and gagged to a splintered stool.  You consider that maybe-- just maybe-- this is not the right thing to be doing.  That you should not shoot this man.  That his dubious guilt does not justify the bullet which does not justify the information you may glean from his pain which does not justify the questionably positive effects it may wrought upon the larger earth.

“Harry,” you say again, but the quiver has passed from your voice and into your hand, and all that is left is the doubt. 

He comes up behind you.  He puts one hand on your shoulder blade and brings the other up to cover the knuckles of your gun hand, tightening briefly.  Guiding, but not forcing.  Showing.  _This is what I want you to do,_ he is saying.  Not asking.  Telling.

“Eggsy,” he says in your ear. 

You close your eyes.

You imagine, for a moment, a different scenario. 

The man in front of you falls away.  The sweat of this stinking cellar evaporates.  The crusted blood on the knuckles of your left hand flakes off.  You breathe Harry’s scent in as deeply as you can and close your eyes.  You find yourself in Paris-- no, in Rome--

No. In New York City.

That mission has always stuck in your mind like an old tack someone left in the wall before moving out of a house.  Still high off of the thrill of having Harry, _Harry Hart_ , back from the dead but missing an eye and your joy no less complete for that fact, you walked over bridges you couldn’t be arsed to learn the names of and you wheedled and cajoled and poked Harry in the ribs until he bought you both sloppy American street vendor food that you ate laughingly while strolling over said nameless bridges.

And you were so stupidly happy that the mission itself doesn’t even come back to you anymore when you think of New York.  The very name conjures waves and waves of warm things, things that fill you up and plaster unbidden smiles over your face whenever the name so much as trips fleetingly across your brain.  Things like Harry's broad smile and the flash of his slightly crooked teeth, and the way that his eyes crinkle at the edges like crumpled paper when he's content.

“Come now, Eggsy,” Harry murmurs in your ear, and you come back to yourself, the faintest vestiges of the smile lingering like a feather on the wind before falling away under the heat of the room you’re in.  “He knows something.  And _we_ need to know what that _something_ is.” 

The hand on your shoulder blade stirs, in a way that is not immediately discernible beneath bulletproof fabric.  Eventually, you feel it: a slow backwards-and-forwards motion of one finger.  No other part of Harry moves.  His breath is still by your ear.  You feel him, mere inches away from being pressed against your right side, and you feel him only through the prickling of the goosebumps that run up and down your skin from the proximity.

Your glasses are tucked in the pocket of Harry’s jacket.  A very faint, tinny screeching seems to be emanating from somewhere in that vicinity, but you can’t be sure.

“ _Do it_ ,” he hisses.

You do it. 

Harry steps back the moment your hand tightens on the gun, gives you the room to shoot _one-two_ , perfectly and precisely and unflinchingly aimed into the suspected terrorist’s kneecaps.  He screams, of course, but by then you are also screaming; bearing down upon him with gun poised and deathly steady and screaming at him to “ _tell me what you know!  C’mon, you fucking prick, tell me what you know_!”

You bring your other hand around to clench the gun in a two-handed grip, sighting down the barrel at the piece of filth cringing before you, teeth set, hair falling in your face, suit stretching around the taut muscles of your back.  But all you feel is the heated charge of the air around your knuckles where Harry’s hand had been, and your back tingles with the feeling that you sometimes get when you know you have a tail but you can’t catch a glimpse of the bugger no matter now many times you turn around and look.

The man, eventually, spills. 

Words fall from his mouth in pain-choked sobs: everything from inventive invectives in a foreign tongue to pleas for his mother mother to-- finally-- the information that they need.

That Harry wants. 

When it’s all over, Harry takes your glasses out of his jacket with a flourish and replaces them on your face.

“It’s alright, we got it,” you cut over Merlin’s chattering. 

And you smile up at Harry, because Harry is smiling down at you.  He has a hand pushing your stray sweaty hair back up into your hairline-- you both know it’s useless but he tries anyway, and you very, _very_ much lean into the touch, your smile widening and your eyelids falling just a tiny bit shut, like your knees would probably would be going weak right about now if you didn’t need them so much to-- well, to simply stay standing at this point, running on 28 hours with no sleep and six caffeine pills and an injection of

_This will help,” Harry says as he slides the needle into the crook of your elbow._

You’re close enough that your forehead nearly brushes against Harry’s chin.  You let it.  A gentle bump, and then he’s tilting his head down, his nose grazing your cheekbone briefly-- a wholly unnecessary detour on his mouth’s way to your ear.

“I’m so proud of you,” he whispers. 

Merlin does not hear.

Then he draws back swiftly.  He claps a businesslike hand on your shoulder and gives it a faint squeeze before turning back to the man in the chair behind them, briefly forgotten; twin rivulets of blood leaking down his shins and pooling thickly on the concrete floor. 

And you know that you’ll do it again.   

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why all I seem to want to do is write second-person Eggsy, but, well. It seems that when I get emotional (helloooooo A Single Man, I'm looking at you) this is the kind of drivel that pours from my keyboard. I will leave you to its dubious charms. 
> 
> Reviews are appreciated as well. I've a feeling that 2nd person POV isn't too popular in fic, and I'm curious as to the opinions of the masses on this subject.


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